A large deletion spanning multiple enhancers near PITX2 increases primary open-angle glaucoma risk.

IMPORTANCE

Genome-wide association studies have identified hundreds of common single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) and small insertions/deletions (indels) associated with primary open-angle glaucoma (POAG) risk, though these variants have modest effect sizes and individually may have minor contributions to disease development. As whole-genome sequencing data is becoming more readily available, structural variants and other complex genomic features can be interrogated for contribution to disease risk.

OBJECTIVE

Test the association of structural variants in known glaucoma loci with disease risk.

DESIGN

Cross-sectional study.

SETTING

A multicenter cohort of individuals from the United States who contributed genomic and electronic health record data to the All of Us Research Program.

PARTICIPANTS

POAG case/control cohorts were generated in the All of Us Researcher Workbench using age (>40 for cases, >65 for controls) and ICD 9/10 diagnosis codes.

MAIN OUTCOMES AND MEASURES: Logistic regression analyses adjusted for age, sex, and the top 10 principal components of ancestry were used to test association of structural variants within 500 kilobases of 309 known open-angle glaucoma risk loci. The significance threshold after Bonferroni correction was set at p<1.6×10 -4 .

RESULTS

516 POAG cases and 18,716 controls of European ancestry from the All of Us v8 data release were included in the analysis. Mean age was 77.0 years among cases and 74.7 years among controls. Females comprised 45.7% of cases and 56.5% of controls. An 8,732 base pair deletion upstream of PITX2 (chr4:110680827-110689558) was associated with 7.3-fold higher odds of POAG (95% confidence interval: 2.9-18.5, p= 2.4×10 -5 , variant carrier frequency= 1.6% in cases and 0.25% in controls). Functional annotation identified multiple enhancers overlapping the deletion, suggesting that this structural variant likely impacts gene regulation and expression.

CONCLUSION AND RELEVANCE: Whole genome sequencing data captures rare structural variants with large effect sizes that are missed by conventional SNP and indel genotyping approaches, enabling improved POAG risk stratification. These data also expand the phenotypic spectrum of structural variation in the PITX2 locus from childhood glaucoma to adult-onset disease, where age at diagnosis and clinical severity may be influenced by the extent of disrupted regulatory elements.